ABSTRACT:
In the present paper, we argue that the right to exist as an epistemic being is a less explored dimension among aspects orienting human rights demands. We build on this idea discussing how a conceptualization of languages as discrete categories may affect students, especially those from marginalized groups. In exchanges with narratives produced by Filhos, a student in a college preparatory course for disadvantaged youths and adults, we reflect on the performative effects of modernist views of language, especially concerning the English language. Focusing on different instants of interaction we observe how Filhos reconstructs her academic trajectory of socialization (WORTHAM, 2015) and the orders of indexicality (BLOMMAERT, 2005) that organize it. The results point in the direction of ambivalent enactments, in which meanings concerning learning and communication are hierarchically organized in contradictory ways. Filhos enacts a subjectivity that is null in terms of legitimate knowledges and unable to perform in the world in the English language, while, at the same time, engaging in creative translingual practices. This fluctuation points to an important aspect of educational processes: “we need to disturb meaningfulness” and to have eyes for what might at first seem minute, or unimportant. Such an investigative focus implies an ethical-political commitment to a “pedagogy of mixtures,” in direct rapport with the linguistic rights of those who occupy socially marginalized positions.
Keywords:
subjectivities; trajectory of socialization; pedagogy of mixtures; orders of indexicality